Presidential Polls Of Swing States Differ On Size Of Obama's Lead

WASHINGTON -- A batch of new polls from two key battleground states produced some of the largest leads yet for President Barack Obama, drawing criticism from the campaign of Republican nominee Mitt Romney.

While the margins produced by these and other surveys vary, they collectively point to a consistent underlying trend: Big gains in enthusiasm among Democratic partisans have helped boost Obama since the party conventions.

In Florida, a state widely considered a must-win for Romney, results ranged from a whopping 9 point Obama lead (53 to 43 percent) on the new CBS/Times/Quinnipiac poll, to a 4 point Obama advantage on the Washington Post poll (51 to 47 percent), to a much narrower 1 point edge for Obama (48 to 47 percent) on a Tampa Bay Times/Miami Herald/Mason Dixon poll.

Most of the other polls have been closer to the Post and Mason-Dixon results. The HuffPost Pollster tracking model, which combines results from all public polls -- national and statewide -- to produce an estimate for each state shows Obama leading in Florida by just over five percentage points.

In Ohio, the two new live interviewer surveys both give Obama wide leads. The CBS/Times/Quinnipiac poll shows him leading by 10 percentage points (53 to 43 percent), while the Washington Post poll has Obama ahead of Romney by 8 (52 to 44 percent).

A third survey conducted by Gravis Marketing, a call center whose automated surveys do not sample cell phones and that consistently produces more Republican-leaning results, found a smaller lead for Obama (45 to 44 percent). The Gravis numbers were the closest margin for Romney among the recent polls. Three other Ohio polls released in the last week gave Obama leads varying between 3 and 7 percentage points.

The HuffPost Pollster tracking model, which also corrects for pollster "house effects" -- consistent differences across polling firms -- currently gives Obama an advantage of just over six percentage points.

On Monday, Romney campaign pollster Neil Newhouse joined a chorus of conservative pundits in questioning the partisan and demographic composition of recent polls in battleground states. "I don't think [the polls] reflect the composition of what 2012 is going to look like," Newhouse told the Hill.

Both the CBS/Times/Quinnipiac and Washington Post polls reported the partisan composition of their samples, the percentages of likely voters who said they think of themselves as Democrats, Republicans or independents. Conservative critics have been comparing the party identification results from recent polls to the partisanship expressed by voters surveyed by exit pollsters in 2008, typically focusing on the margins separating Democrats and Republicans. In both Ohio and Florida, the Washington Post poll found the Democratic advantage to be slightly narrower than 2008, while the new CBS/Times/Quinnipiac polls show it to be slightly wider in Ohio and considerably wider in Florida.

The most notable difference, however, is that all of the current polls are showing more independents among likely voters than exit polls found had voted four years ago. So in absolute terms, the percentages of both Democrats and Republicans fall short of the exit poll estimates from four years ago. That difference is not surprising. Voters typically express a slightly greater sense of partisanship moments after voting than they do weeks or months before voting.

Contrary to the assertions of some commentators, the pollsters who conduct the CBS/Times/Quinnipiac and Washington Post surveys do not directly set the partisanship or the demographics of their likely voter samples. They first sample all adults in each state, weighting the demographics of the full adult sample (for characteristics such as gender, age, race and education) to match Census estimates for the full population.

They then use different methods to select "likely voters" -- those who indicate they are likely to vote -- without further adjusting their characteristics. If the partisanship or demographics of the likely voters changes, it tells us something about the attitudes that will drive voter turnout.

The means used to select those likely voters vary across polls, and are arguably as much art as science, but the most recent results provide an important measure of rising Democratic enthusiasm. "Nearly half of Florida Democrats now say they are more enthusiastic about voting than in the past," CBS News reports, "up from 24 percent at the start of August." National surveys like Gallup and the Pew Research Center have tracked similar trends.

No measure of voting intention is perfect and, as CBS also reports, Romney retains some key advantages among other cuts of the most engaged voters. "The race is far closer," they add, "among voters who say they are paying a lot of attention to the campaign - it's a tie among that group in Ohio, and Mr. Obama's lead in Florida shrinks to four among this subset."

For the moment, however, surveys continue to track rising Democratic enthusiasm, and those changes explain much of the improvement for Obama over the last month.

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Barack Obama's Greatest Hits

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(April 27, 2011) -- The White House released President Barack Obama's "long form" birth certificate, adding documentation to a longstanding discussion over his ability to serve as commander in chief. "We do not have time for this kind of silliness," Obama said. "We have better stuff to do. I have got better stuff to do. We have got big problems to solve." (JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images)

(May 1, 2011) -- In a televised address to the nation, Obama announces that Osama bin Laden is dead. His death was the result of a U.S. operation launched today in Abbottabad, Pakistan, against a compound where bin Laden was believed to be hiding. "[T]oday's achievement is a testament to the greatness of our country and the determination of the American people," Obama proclaimed. (Photo by Pete Souza/The White House via Getty Images)

(Aug. 2, 2011) -- After the Senate passed a bill to raise the debt limit, Obama pleaded with Congress to shift their attention to jobs. "I will urge them to immediately take some steps -- bipartisan, common-sense steps -- that will make a difference; that will create a climate where businesses can hire, where folks have more money in their pockets to spend, where people who are out of work can find good jobs," he said. (Photo by Brendan Smialowski/Getty Images)

(Sept. 20, 2011) -- As the ban on gays serving in the military came to an end, Obama hailed the fresh start, celebrating the fact that "patriotic Americans in uniform will no longer have to lie about who they are in order to serve the country they love." (Photo by Brendan Hoffman/Getty Images)

(Oct. 21, 2011) -- Obama announced that all U.S. troops will be out of Iraq by 2011, fulfilling a promise that dated back to his campaign. "As a candidate for president, I pledged to bring the war in Iraq to a responsible end," Obama said. "So today I can report that, as promised, the rest of our troops in Iraq will come home by the end of the year." (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

(Jan. 20, 2012) -- During a fundraiser at Harlem's historic Apollo Theater, Obama delivered a memorable musical message to his donors. With Rev. Al Green in attendance, Obama sang part of Green's hit song "Let's Stay Together," drawing strong applause from the crowd.

(Feb. 21, 2012) -- Days after his Al Green rendition, Obama flexed his vocal chords again with a hometown favorite. The East Room of the White House had its blues fix filled when the president started swinging "Sweet Home Chicago."

(May 9, 2012) -- In a sit-down interview with ABC's Robin Roberts, Obama explained his evolution on the issue, affirming his support for gay marriage. "[A]t a certain point I've just concluded that for me personally it is important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same sex couples should be able to get married," he said.

(June 15, 2012) -- The Obama administration addressed America's immigration issue, announcing that it will halt deportations and grant work permits to young individuals eligible for Dream-Act benefits. "They pledge allegiance to our flag," Obama said. "They are Americans in their hearts, in their minds, in every single way but one: on paper."(Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)

(June 28, 2012) -- After weeks of speculation that Obama's signature piece of legislation could be overturned, the Supreme Court ruled that the Affordable Care Act's individual mandate is constitutional. "It should be pretty clear that I didn't do this because it's good politics," Obama said. "I did it because it's good for the country." (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images)